That #DigCit State of Mind Thing, 2.0

Dear Teachers,

That whole pandemic thing really affected my blog-writing. I’ve started countless posts in the past year and a half or so, and very few of them were ever completed, let alone published. But things seem to be getting back to whatever “normal” is, so I’ve been feeling energized enough to get back to a project I started on a few months back.

Years ago, I created an infographic titled “Stages of Growth into a #DigCit State of Mind.” It was based on years of anecdotal observations of educators’ attitudes and behaviors around digital citizenship, and how I had seen growth in thinking, from teachers being very technology-averse to being quite proactive in helping their students think about complex issues of digital citizenship. This infographic was shared widely and was included in ISTE’s Digital Citizenship in Action online course.

I’ve been wanting to revisit that framework for quite awhile now, especially in light of how the pandemic impacted all of our digital lives. For example, many educators who had been adamant non-tech proponents prior to March 2020 had to – however reluctantly – embrace the power of technology to go about their daily work. Additionally, I heard countless stories about how students didn’t seem to have applied any learning from stand-alone digital citizenship lessons to the new realities of “Zoom School.”

Rather than viewing a “#DigCit State of Mind” as a continuum of stages, I’m now thinking that it’s about teachers’ choice in how they will respond to helping their students learn to navigate the digital world.

I’d be delighted if you’d take a look and see if these choices resonate with you. Is this what you’re seeing? What am I missing? And how can we encourage educators to “make good choices”? I look forward to hearing from you.

Fondly (as ever),

Nancy